I Don’t Shop at Wal-Mart

Not only do I not shop at Wal-Mart, I do not have my oil changed at Jiffy Lube. Companies like Wal-Mart do bring low cost goods to America and the world but they also treat their vendors and their employees like dirt. As to Jiffy Lube, I prefer the attention of a capable mechanic. I will never forget my one time at a quick lube franchise. I had to have my car towed to another garage.

I am willing to pay a little more for the competent workers that are employed by the independent stores and garages that really give me the kind of services I want.

Yes, I shop at Costco. The reason is that they pay their employees so well that the employee turnover is low. My next door neighbor, a Costco employee, bought his home at the bottom of the housing collapse but still paid $333,000. His wife has a part time at home business. The pay at Costco can’t be too bad.

Meanwhile the working poor are employed by the big and very successful national chains. Those chains depend on low wage workers. The companies are Wal-Mart, Target, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, etc. etc. The top 50 executives at each of those companies were paid an average of $9.4 Million a year. The typical worker at those companies has an adjusted gross income of $13,900 a year.

Focusing on Wal-Mart, it’s subsidized by the taxpayers of America. It has the most workers on public assistance. In 2007, the company shifted from regular shifts to flexible shifts, a change labor activists said was designed to force full-time workers to downgrade their status to part-time, so they would not qualify for health insurance or other benefits. The result is that hundreds of thousands of Wal-Mart employees rely on state benefits or Medicaid. Most of the company’s warehouses are contracted out to temp agencies, so even if a warehouse loader works full-time in a Wal-Mart warehouse for years, he gets no benefits. Wal-Mart has also spent at least $1 billion since 2005 settling lawsuits over unpaid wages or illegal working conditions. One study estimated that Wal-Mart workers cost taxpayers more than $1 Billion every year.

Source for part of this article is The Week magazine.

Politicians Use Fear to Get Their Way

Politicians use fear to motivate each other and the general public.

The President is wrong to use fear to motivate Congress!

In California the governor, Jerry Brown, used fear to motivate voters to vote for a .25% sales tax increase and an income tax increase on the wealthy. It worked! Now there are indications that the state may be able to restore many programs that had been canceled and save others that were scheduled for major reductions. The problem is that the additional state income may be spent on unnecessary new programs.

The city of Los Angeles wants voters to approve another .5% sales tax increase to bail out their shortfall. Their fear motivation is that the city will go bankrupt without the higher tax. That will be decided in a March 5 election.

President Obama is using the same tactic in his campaign to stop sequestration. The threat is long lines at airports, reduced food inspection, criminal illegal aliens will be let out onto our streets, companies doing business with the government may have to layoff half of their employees, we can’t send patrol ships to the Persian Gulf, etc. All of this the result of a 2.4% reduction in this year’s budget that must be absorbed in the next seven month.

The stock market is not panicked and we can only hope that it doesn’t panic. There are no demonstrations in the streets. Mr. President, you are alienating the public when you use fear as a tactic to get your way!

Did the Pope Resign as the Result of Child Abuse/Sex Abuse Cases?

There are suspicions about the reason for Pope Benedict’s resignation. After all, no pope has resigned in about 600 years. The others all died in office. I am sure that many of them were in poor health but continued as best they could. So why did the current pope believe he could no longer perform the duties required of the position?

CNN posted this on the bottom of their screen during “Reliable Sources” today. “Italian media are buzzing with reports that the pope’s resignation was tied to a secret report on gay priests. The Vatican strongly condemns the allegations, calling them ‘deplorable.’ The allegations may be deplorable (synonym for unforgivable) but are they accurate?

Here are the cardinals involved in sex abuse case cover-up:

Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York
Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles

Instances of abuse listed on Wikipedia. Even if these cases are exaggerated the extent of abuse is overwhelming.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas paid $30.9 million in 1998 to twelve victims of one priest.^[21] In July 2003 the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville paid $25.7 million to “settle child sexual-abuse allegations made in 240 lawsuits naming 34 priests and other church workers.”^[21]

In 2003 the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston also settled a large case for $85 million with 552 alleged victims.^[87]

In 2004, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange settled nearly 90 cases for $100 million.^[88]

In April 2007 the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon agreed to a $75 million settlement with 177 claimants and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle agreed to a $48 million settlement with more than 160 victims.^[89]

In July 2007 the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles reached a $660 million agreement with more than 500 alleged victims, in December 2006, the archdiocese had a settlement of 45 lawsuits for $60 million.^[23][90]

In September 2007 the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego reached a $198.1 million “agreement with 144 childhood sexual abuse victims.”^[91]

In July 2008 the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Denver agreed “to pay $5.5 million to settle 18 claims of childhood sexual abuse.”^[92] The Associated Press estimated the total from settlements of sex abuse cases from 1950-2007 to be more than $2 billion.^[23] According to BishopAccountability reports that figure reached more than $3 billion in 2012.^[6][20]

In the late 1980s allegations were made of physical and sexual abuse committed by members of the Christian Brothers, who operated the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

In June 2010, Belgian police raided the Belgian Catholic Church headquarters in Brussels, seizing a computer and records of a Church commission investigating allegations of child abuse.

In April 2010 it was reported that former bishop of the Norwegian Catholic Church, Georg Müller, had confessed to the Norwegian Police in early January 2010 that he had sexually abused an underaged altar boy 20 years earlier.

In November 2010, an independent group in Austria ^[82] that operates a hotline to help people exit the Catholic Church released a report documenting physical, sexual, and emotional abuse perpetrated by Austrian priests, nuns, and other religious officials.

In 2012 an Australian police report in the Victoria state jurisdiction detailed 40 suicide deaths by people who had been abused by Catholic clergy.

Perhaps Pope Benedict is so dismayed that he can’t bring himself to lead the church any longer. Perhaps he too is guilty of some of the crimes. We will never really know. It is sad that one of the world’s greatest religions has this horrible mark on its history. What other marks does it have?

Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Weapons Ban Legislation

This proposed law may never be passed by Congress but Senator Dianne Feinstein has nothing to lose and everything to gain. If passed, this legislation will help reduce the homicide rates in our nation.

It has been reported that the Administration is focusing on high-capacity magazines because they are the real issue and it is believed that there can be agreement on that issue.

Assault Weapons Ban of 2013

The legislation bans the sale, transfer, manufacturing and importation of:

1. All semiautomatic rifles that can accept a detachable magazine and have at least one military feature: pistol grip; forward grip; folding, telescoping, or detachable stock; grenade launcher or rocket launcher; barrel shroud; or threaded barrel.

2. All semiautomatic pistols that can accept a detachable magazine and have at least one military feature: threaded barrel; second pistol grip; barrel shroud; capacity to accept a detachable magazine at some location outside of the pistol grip; or semiautomatic version of an automatic firearm.

3. All semiautomatic rifles and handguns that have a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds.

4. All semiautomatic shotguns that have a folding, telescoping, or detachable stock; pistol grip; fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 5 rounds; ability to accept a detachable magazine; forward grip; grenade launcher or rocket launcher; or shotgun with a revolving cylinder.

5. All ammunition feeding devices (magazines, strips, and drums) capable of accepting more than 10 rounds.

6. 157 specifically-named firearms (listed at the end of this document).

The legislation excludes the following weapons from the bill:

a. Any weapon that is lawfully possessed at the date of the bill’s enactment;

b. Any firearm manually operated by a bolt, pump, lever or slide action;

c. Assault weapons used by military, law enforcement, and retired law enforcement; and

d. Antique weapons.

The legislation protects hunting and sporting firearms:

i. The bill excludes 2,258 legitimate hunting and sporting rifles and shotguns by specific make and model.

The legislation strengthens the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban and state bans by:

ii. Moving from a 2-characteristic test to a 1-characteristic test.

The bill also makes the ban harder to evade by eliminating the easy-to-remove bayonet mounts and flash suppressors from the characteristics test.

iii. Banning dangerous aftermarket modifications and workarounds.

iv. Bump or slide fire stocks, which are modified stocks that enable semi-automatic weapons to fire at rates similar to fully automatic machine guns.

v. So-called “bullet buttons” that allow the rapid replacement of ammunition magazines, frequently used as a workaround to prohibitions on detachable magazines.

vi. Thumbhole stocks, a type of stock that was created as a workaround to avoid prohibitions on pistol grips.

vii. Adding a ban on the importation of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.

viii. Eliminating the 10-year sunset that allowed the original federal ban to expire.

The legislation addresses the millions of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines currently in existence by:

i. Requiring a background check on all sales or transfers of a grandfathered assault weapon.

ii. This background check can be run through the FBI or, if a state chooses, initiated with a state agency, as with the existing background check system.

iii. Prohibiting the sale or transfer of large-capacity ammunition feeding devices lawfully possessed on the date of enactment of the bill.

iv. Allowing states and localities to use federal Byrne JAG grant funds to conduct a voluntary buy-back program for grandfathered assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition feeding devices.

v. Imposing a safe storage requirement for grandfathered firearms, to keep them away from prohibited persons.

vi. Requiring that assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition feeding devices manufactured after the date of the bill’s enactment be engraved with the serial number and date of manufacture of the weapon.

List of Firearms Prohibited by Name

Rifles:
Pistols:
Shotguns:
Belt-fed semiautomatic firearms:

Inauguration Day 2013

President Barack Obama offered an inaugural speech calling for unification of purpose regardless of political party. This is the sort of speech we all expect in an inaugural presentation. Sadly political divisions in the nation are more like chasms. He knows that there are major differences between the political parties and other groups in the country. Listen to Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity and there is affirmation of the split between the political parties.

Thus he tried to put the best face on a country that is seriously broken by geographic, religious, and racial disagreements. Never mind the breach between rich and poor or the labor unions battling the employers. When state leaders voice intentions to nullify or just plain ignore federal law and many who voice desires to succeed from the union, the president’s job will be about holding the nation together.

This may seem as all too negative. The president’s speech about one purpose was an “A” effort towards healing our differences.